Topic: [Brainstorm] Implications of Blacklisting DPR's Seized Bitcoins - page 2. (Read 4987 times)

I hope all the people here advocating a blacklist are trolling. Its probably telling how ineffective a blacklist will be because none of the core developers have bothered to post a serious reply.

Bitcoin works because we trust the math and the network, once we add a blacklist we now have to trust people again.  Angelamerkel, you keep saying we should not push our ideals onto you, however it is really you pushing your ideals onto us. We got involved with Bitcoin based on Satoshi's principles and the core feature is a network based on math and not having to trust people.

Your blacklist is actually against what Satoshi wanted and thus it is anti-bitcoin. I understand you want lots of power to block payments similar to paypal, so I suggest you create a clone of Bitcoin and set it up so that you can satisfy your ideals.

This is DPR's fault for giving over his coins or having a stupid weak password or allowing a keylogger onto his machine. Lets face the facts, DPR screwed up big time, he is so screwed. I wonder what his wallet password to $28 million was? Couldn't have been too difficult.

Also Bitcoins are not actually coins, did you know via taint analysis 98% of all Bitcoin users have a trace of the 10,000 bitcoin pizza transaction? Bitcoins are just numbers and if you blacklist a set amount of coins eventually they will spread all over the network (see via taint analysis how coins dilute into one another)

The blacklist would only work if 51% of the network agreed, and then we have paypalcoin.

Angelamerkel, we are forcing our views because the ideals you are against are the reason most of us got into Bitcoin, you don't want Bitcoin, you want paypalcoin.

Grab the Bitcoin source, add the blacklist system and announce it over in the alt-coin section. Cheers.

Right, robbed is what I meant. 

Unless nearly all Bitcoiners blacklist them (and I doubt this is possible), they would spread more and more among the people who accept them.
Then you have two versions of Bitcoins that aren't able to trade with each other...

So yeah, awful idea.

You cannot call that stealing. If violence or threat of violence is used, it is a robbery. The FBI is a bunch of armed gangsters who robs their victims 

Coins weren't frozen, coins were stolen.

Like i said, i guess there will be very few independent agencies who will take care of the blacklist.  Trust and reputation has to grow over the years I'm afraid. And yes if a member of this agency decides to screw you over, you can do nothing about it.  

But it will be very unlikely that you will be affected by such a corruption. As soon as the corruption spreads and public becomes aware of it, people will start using another agency.

You basically can ask all the same questions about the legal system in the real world. And like in all societies, also libertarian ones, it holds true:

Most people are willing to pay that small price (of possible corruption) to have a working legal system (forced right now in the real world  or unforced in libertarian & Bitcoin society) that takes care of the bad guys.  

Another thought:   We now have market participants, we have a currency, we have goods being traded  and we now need a legal system around it, because the current real world legal system is unable to cope with problems that may occur.  As market participants are unable to track down  and bitcoins can be easily laundered  the only way for the real world legal system to cope with bitcoin-criminals is to shut down Bitcoin completely.  I'm really afraid, what will happen, if first criminals discover Bitcoin and all the possibilites around it we can't even think of right now...

The first criminal, who stole 144K coins and will probably use parts of it to kill civilians in  just another innocent country,  just recently entered the market :-)

It would go against the whole your coins can't be "frozen" line.

And when someone decides to force your assets onto the blacklist in retaliation, or some other perceived slight? Who will be the one providing oversight? And how will we trust them? Will it be a cabal of the 1% of Bitcoin owners? A coalition of government organizations? And what recourse will you have once someone declares your wallet full of fraudulent funds? What happens if the judgment of whatever "authority" deems your appeal invalid and your funds remain forever black-marked?

Do you really want to continue down this road? Sounds like there's more 'force' involved here than in neutrality.

Also, we'll have to have a look in your pocketbook.  Some of these notes might need to be blackmarked.

Seriously, though, feel free to create a whole new coin that integrates your ideas into it and let the market decide. I'm quite sure that "Confis-Coin" will be a huge success. 

Quite simply, adding blacklisting to the protocol will eventually cripple bitcoin, probably kill it. Human nature will guarantee that.

And that's why government(s) will almost certainly insist upon blacklisting in the protocol as a condition of acceptance as legal tender - whether it's by central authority or a decentralized system.

I guess there will be very few security agencies, who people will report crimes to and who will look into the cases. People can subscribe to one of these agencies if they trust their judgement. Maybe there will be only one really big agency. But I don't see any room for corruption as blacklisting is not permanent and people can easily switch agencies.

No need for physical force, if i'm able to corrupt the system based on the rules of the system.

How do people get added to the blacklist? I assume someone has to do so manually? And how is a consensus reached? Votes? Do people have to register their real life identities in order to vote? Or do they just vote by registering?

It's way too easy to game this system. No need for physical violence or threat thereof. You simply threaten to make someones coin horde unspendable. Either by having lots of people register to vote you onto the blacklist (i assume that it would be done via email address or, worst, cell phone number), both are very easy to come by.

Explain precisely how do you stop this?

That sounds more and more like a private Bitcoin police. It might sound strange, but I like the idea because unlike in the real world people can and will easily opt out if they become corrupt.
The thing with the syndicate dominating everything is a myth. Monopolies only work with physical force or the threat of the same.

Then we should blacklist every coin that's ever been stolen via keystroke logger, Trojan, account hack, or anything else nefarious. Except that could do away with far more coins than the FBI got.

Or, you don't like a world with violence and cohersion? What are you options when you buy coins from me (or I otherwise find out your address) and send you an email - give me 10% of your total BTC holdings or else me and my entire syndicate will add your coins to the blacklist? What can you possibly do?  Sure, I dint have a syndicate currently, but if you allow for blacklisting, you'd better believe syndicates will pop up all over.

Think things through. To the logical final conclusion. It's not as cut and dried as you'd like.

At that point aren't they better off simply launching an "officially authorized" bitcoin clone?

Wrong, go rob some fresh bills from the bank and see if you can deposit it at another bank.

If all exchanges join up and block list the coins, it would be enough to make them rather useless.

But i think MtGox will just "seize" them for themselves.... remember bitcoinia?

In a general way that is pretty straightforward.  Publish it.  If it is reliable and respected by the community, and if it is trivial to use, this would probably be fairly effective.  White-list similarly.  Furthermore, different groups could produce different [white|black]lists which either compete for credibility or augment one another.

For addresses or transactions this would be unworkable for latency reasons.  And a disastrous conceptually as well of course.  For blocks, however, it would be a quick-n-dirty way to handle superior resource attacks (aka 51%) which is one of the reasons I never worried to much about them.

Any good or decent mixer is going to either dislocate the original seized coins, or will effectively taint everything else.

See CoinJoin too.

A blacklist simply can not work. Unless it is implemented now while the coins have not yet left that particular address, and used by all miners in the world.

It would be trivial for someone to send coins to shared wallets, to exchanges, to gambling sites, let it sit there for a few days or weeks, then withdraw it. Or they send to an exchange or trade it for an alt-coin. Use the alt-coin to buy bitcoins later from someone else.

And how do you decentralize a blacklist?

I don't think the government will end up giving them up or even selling them

Just whatever you do, don't put money in your mouth. Lord. I have seen some of these women. Probably washing your hands after handling money (especially ones) is a good idea, too.

Politicization of the reference bitcoin client would inevitably kill it. Don't politicize bitcoin.